What Is Automation and How Will It Affect Staffing?

Automation is a hot topic, and many are on the fence just how it will impact their every day. Will it disrupt the tasks they perform on a day to day basis? Could future jobs be replaced by automation? Or worse, could current jobs be replaced by automation? There’s so much fear around how automation will change the way we do business, but which fears are valid and which fears stem from nothing but myths? In this post, we’ll explore what automation actually means in staffing, and whether or not you really have cause to be concerned. I hope by the end of this article, I can convince you that not only do you not have to be afraid of automation, but that the real fear should be that you’re not fully embracing automation the way you should.

To start, what exactly does it mean to automate?

According to Cambridge Dictionary, to automate something is to “to make a process in a factory or office operate by machines or computers, in order to reduce the amount of work done by humans and the time taken to do the work.” It’s no wonder there’s fear around what automation in staffing will mean to the future of current human jobs. Before we jump to that conclusion though, let’s talk this through.

There are a number of places in staffing where automation is already helping you do your job. One of the earliest technologies that was staffing industry-specific was the invention of the resume parser. Another example of automation technology was the online job application. And another example of automation was the advent of matching engines. Over the years, there were many that promised to be able to find the ideal candidate and pair them up with the ideal job. Even automation like “job alerts” attempts to minimize some aspect of busy work through a routinized set of operations. It is noteworthy that all of these automations are basically oriented toward cost reduction.

That’s great, but won’t automation replace my job?

Staffing is not the first industry embracing automation. In fact, Barry Asin at Staffing Industry Analysts actually looked at a couple of jobs to demonstrate just how differently automation can impact an industry or job. Two jobs he looked at were travel agent and real estate agents. He noted that, while automation was impacting both greatly, the result affected them very differently. While travel agents showed a decline in growth over the years, real estate agents actually grew before slowing down. One of the biggest differences between these jobs is the requirements of having a human relationship. Automation can be excellent when it comes to cutting down on easily repeated, high frequency, low touch processes. It’s not possible to recreate the human relationship though. Jobs that require creativity, trust building, negotiation—those jobs cannot be easily repeated at high frequencies, and therefore they cannot be easily replaced by automation.

Staffing is very much an industry reliant on the human relationship. Recruiters must build trust with their candidates. And they must negotiate pay rates and contracts. In an industry requiring so much human interaction, it’s highly unlikely that automation can replace recruiters. In fact, one could easily argue that automation will help recruiters, by eliminating the tasks that currently take a recruiter away from interacting with candidates and clients; tasks like copying jobs from a VMS into an ATS, screening a candidate for their location preferences, and gathering required credential documents.

Below is a potential world in which automation has been added to streamline workflows, freeing up a recruiter’s time to build relationships with candidates and clients:

You’ll notice that there are several areas where automation has taken a task from a recruiter: importing jobs into the ATS, scheduling phone screenings, submitting candidates into the VMS, sending status follow-ups. There are a number of tasks, however, that are still dependent on a human: recruiter phone screens, client phone screens, negotiating. It’s often the recruiter who explores what areas of change are of interest—title and compensation, work-life balance, commute, one’s boss, the culture, the future opportunities. When it comes to understanding them in the context of the local market, that’s something only a recruiter can do. It takes the recruiter to identify those reasons for change, and the recruiter to play them back to the candidate later on in the process when it’s time to close. If applicable to your business, prepping before and debriefing after a client phone screen or client interview is not something automation will solve for you. You’ll need to role play, and you’ll want to reinforce certain ideas—that’s just not something automations do today. Finally, there’s negotiation—whether it’s finalizing a pay rate or locking in the start date or any additional reimbursements—it’s critical that a human be involved. There’s also plenty that you as a recruiter learn about the candidate during the negotiation; both what’s important to him or her, but also the way in which he or she pursues it.

I would argue that if you asked any recruiter if they would prefer to copy/paste a job from a VMS into an ATS, or if they would rather it be done automatically for them, they would almost always request it be done automatically. In fact, a recent article in The Wall Street Journal agrees. In the article, they point out that automation could potentially create more jobs than it destroys. The tasks that are easiest to automate are usually those that are redundant and routine, and therefore the jobs that many find the least fulfilling.

So, if I’ve been able to convince you to embrace automation, you might now be asking – how?

There are so many ways to automate today, but it’s not necessary to do everything at once. I’d actually argue that it’s better to start with just one or a few processes, so that you can really measure its impact on your business. Below are some steps you might want take, and questions you should ask, in order to direct your efforts and help you prioritize your first attempts at automation:

Pinpoint an area of your business that could benefit from automation. What processes take you too long to do today? What processes could you afford to give up that human touch, so that you can shift that human effort elsewhere?

Set goals for what you want to achieve with automation, so you can measure its success. What goals do you have for your business? Do you want to increase fill rates? Do you want to decrease time to fill? Are you trying to improve candidate engagement and experience? Do you want to decrease headcount, or do you want to reassign your current staff?

Ensure your team is on board, so you can see results. Make sure your team understands the goals associated with this change. The more bought in the team is, the more success you’ll see, and the less they will fear that automation will replace them. Help them understand the benefits these changes have on both the business, as well as their career.

Still not sure where to start, or want to read up on automation a little more before taking the plunge? Herefish, a Bullhorn partner who helps staffing firms automate the small things so they can focus on the big things, recommends 25 Things Every Recruiting Firm Should Automate.

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Jonathan Novich

SVP of Product and Salesforce

Jonathan Novich is SVP of Product and Salesforce for Bullhorn, the global leader in CRM and operations software for the recruitment industry. A staffing technology innovator, he has developed broad and deep product and technical experience consulting to staffing firms over the past 15 years. Jonathan has acted as an independent consultant for some of the largest staffing companies in the world and advised companies on acquisition targets.
At Bullhorn, he oversees product initiatives as more than 10,000 staffing companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to drive sales, build relationships, and power their recruitment processes from end to end. He graduated with honors from Princeton University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Computer Science and a certificate in Operations Research.

Ed Holmes

SVP, Workforce & Revenue Cloud

As Bullhorn’s SVP of Workforce & Revenue Cloud, Ed drives the company’s middle office strategy and overall product offering. Ed joined Bullhorn as part of the Peoplenet acquisition where he spent 7 years as the President/CEO leading up to the acquisition in late 2017. Prior to joining the Bullhorn family, Ed has spent his career designing, building and managing technology solutions for numerous Fortune 500 companies. He has been a Partner in an ERP-focused consulting firm, a CIO for a global pharmaceutical company, a supply-chain leader for a retail company and the leader of a services company from its inception to $50MM in revenue. Ed was born in Florida but has spent the last 20+ years in Atlanta, GA. Ed loves to play golf, tennis and basketball and occasionally gets out kite boarding when the wind is just right.

Ed holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

Brian Sylvester

CFO

Brian Sylvester is Bullhorn’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with more than 15 years of financial leadership experience. Brian leads Bullhorn’s financial, accounting, and legal functions. Prior to becoming CFO, Brian spent three years at Bullhorn in various finance & accounting roles. Prior to Bullhorn, Brian was Corporate Controller at Pegasystems, a global provider of business process management software where he scaled the finance organization during a period of 2.5x revenue growth. Brian began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in their technology audit practice.

Brian is a CPA in Massachusetts, has a Master’s of Science in Accounting from Boston College and a Bachelor’s of Science in Accounting from Bryant University.

Tamsyn Attiwell

SVP, Customer Success

As the Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Tamsyn leads Bullhorn’s Services and Customer Success teams. She is responsible for the successful delivery of all products and services globally and is committed to creating and maintaining incredible long-term customer experiences in the Candidate to Cash process. Tamsyn has been delivering implementations for over 25 years with companies such as SAP, Ariba, Zuora and Apttus: specializing in HR, Payroll, Procurement and Quote To Cash capability. She trained as a software engineer after studying Maths, Statistics, and Computing in England.

Art Papas

Founder & CEO

Art Papas is the Founder and CEO of Bullhorn, Inc, the global leader in software for the staffing & recruitment industry. Art was the original architect of Bullhorn’s flagship Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, which now helps more than 8,000 companies around the world run their businesses. Art is the Chairman of the Board at Career Collaborative, an organization that teaches unemployed and underemployed adults how to build careers that change lives and strengthen families. In 2014, Ernst & Young named Art an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner in New England. Prior to starting Bullhorn, Art started his career as a software engineer at Thomson Reuters. Art is a graduate of Tufts University, holding a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics.

Matt Fischer

President and Chief Technology Officer

As President and CTO, Matt leads Bullhorn’s architectural, technical, and software design and development efforts. He also directs the product management team’s work defining product strategy, and global customer support and success. Since joining Bullhorn in 2004, Matt has held a variety of leadership positions managing the growth of various technical and services teams, including Vice President of Professional Services. Prior to Bullhorn, Matt worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, specializing in systems process assurance for such companies as Fidelity and State Street Global Advisors. Matt holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from Boston University’s School of Management.

Mike Restivo

Chief Revenue Officer

As Bullhorn’s Chief Revenue Officer, Mike drives the company’s global revenue growth. Mike was one of the first 15 team members of Bullhorn Inc. in Boston and relocated to London in 2010 to start up the International team. In his 6 years in London, Mike drove regional expansion into the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, and Australia. He has supplied cloud-based solutions to recruitment consultancies in over 50 different countries worldwide for the past 10 years. Mike was born and raised in the Boston-area where he grew up an avid sport fan. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Babson College.

Kristin Machacek Leary

Chief People Officer

Kristin oversees Bullhorn’s human resources function in her role as Chief People Officer. Kristin joined Bullhorn in 2020 and is responsible for helping Bullhorn scale to the next level, build leadership capacity, and accelerate growth in global markets. Kristin brings to the role over 20 years of experience leading high-potential companies through breakthrough growth and brings a depth of knowledge in organizational design, scalable processes, and flexible systems culled from some of the most successful global companies in the world. Leary joins Bullhorn from Hitachi Vantara, where she served as Chief Human Resources Officer, and before that she worked as Chief Human Resources Officer at Forcepoint, a private equity-backed company with 3,000 employees operating in more than 45 countries. She has also worked at high-growth enterprise technology companies like Alphatec Spine, Boston Scientific, and Hewlett-Packard.

Peter Linas

Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and International

Peter oversees Bullhorn’s international operations across EMEA and APAC in his role as Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and International. Peter joined Bullhorn in 2009 and was responsible for its highly successful UK launch. In addition to growing the international team to over 50 staff and establishing Bullhorn as the UK’s market leading recruitment software in fewer than three years, Peter has expanded Bullhorn’s reach into EMEA and APAC and achieved a user base of more than 10,000 international users. Prior to taking on the launch of Bullhorn in the UK, Peter spent 20 years working in the recruitment industry and held a number of senior director roles before moving into the technology space.

Ryan Murphy

Executive Vice President of Enterprise and Salesforce

Ryan Murphy is the Executive Vice President of Enterprise and Salesforce. He began his 10-year career at Bullhorn as a finance and sales intern, affording him a 360-degree view of the software-as-a-service industry and Bullhorn’s business model. Prior to his current role, Ryan served as an Enterprise Account Executive where he honed his customer-first leadership style and championed Bullhorn’s offerings to its most strategic clients. Today, Murphy is charged with leading the enterprise strategy and go to market for both Bullhorn and Bullhorn for Salesforce, enabling customers to maximize their investments on both platforms and deliver an incredible experience to their customers and candidates. Ryan has a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Boston University.